What's happening to the young men?

[MrsSchrute]

This post is prompted by an article in the Guardian about the murderer of Amie Grey, who has been sentenced to 39 years.
His psychiatric report said he had: 'repressed socially induced trauma resulting from a combination of real and perceived rejections and social humiliations resulting in him feeling alien from general society, a social misfit, somebody who had hardly any friends at school, had never had a girlfriend and seemed to be avoided”

He came from a loving family and had never been in trouble before.

Now, obviously he should absolutely be in prison for what he did, and there is no excuse.

Why is it that more and more young men seem to be so seperate from society? Has it always been the case? Is it the easy access that the internet allows to extremist material that's the issue? What can we, or society, do to stop this??

Maybe we need to look at the blokes who are getting it right and ask how that happens- how do we replicate that for young boys?

Ds is a gaming kid. I suspect girls are not always kind to him. He's a good looking lad, but on the weird end of quirky in a school where quirky is not welcome.

I've talked to him about how it's normal to feel like an outsider/freak/ that everyone else has a gf or bf and you're the ugliest person in the world etc. But he's not much of a talker (unless it's American politics), so I don't know how he feels. I vaguely remember moaning to my mum about wanting a bf, but as she didn't get one until she was 19, she didn't really get why 15 yr old even wanted one.

@Ponderingwindow Sounds like you've been listening to Jordan Peterson. He thinks that if incels got married, they'd stop being misogynists. He's not aware of domestic violence.

Don't panic. Let him make his own way, maybe he'll marry maybe he won't. Just let him know that he needs to be sure that any person he wants to settle with is someone he wants to spend his life with, not just sex.

Several of the young men from our daughters friendship group from Uni are unmarried and happy to stay that way. They have their own houses/apartments, good jobs, pets, holidays and generally seem content.

Your son can have a good life without the burden of a wife (and the wrong partner is surely a burden).

and we have the mass media to thank for making him popular

I don’t think we can blame absent Fathers, there were plenty around after the wars and we didn’t have this shower.

My son’s Father whom my son has never met is very abusive, been reported to the police by women numerous times. Whereas my teenage son has lots of female friends and is an absolute joy. He enjoys being a gentleman and really looks after his Mum.

My brother was abusive and it ruined his life. An academic but couldn’t stop being violent. My Father was an alcoholic and my parents split so that didn’t help and he used to hit me, then it moved on to my frail then dying Father and then my Mother, to the point I thought he’d kill one of us. It’s worth remembering that 10% of deaths by DW are now the Mothers of boy’s dying. This statistic is up. So this is important and needs addressing.

This situation could’ve easily been remedied but my Mothers internalised misogyny always excusing him, never making him accountable, never expecting a high standard of him. In the end I called the police and got him caught in the act, he never did it again. Totally shamed. Although both my Mother and brother never spoke to me for over a month despite ending the violence. Something she didn’t want to protect me from either.

Let’s get real stop pussyfooting about and get these men to act like men, be competitive and do the martial arts or boxing but remember women are to be respected and cherished. I always instilled in my son that I wouldn’t be tolerating how my brother behaved. I don’t know if that made a difference but he’s very kind to me.

I really annoys me when I hear Mothers make excuses for their son’s, thinking men shouldn’t pay maintenance, men should have a decision over abortion that sort of thing. There’s women like that on here too. It’s like men are 2 year olds with zero accountability. So in my opinion us women need to insist on higher standards. I don’t care if a tiny percentage get a date it’s not a woman’s problem. They need to raise their game Tom Cruise is a midget. I’d date a small guy if he was successful in other ways.

I think we do need to look at the expectations of men we have and I think they’re too low and we’ve allowed this with our 50/50, sex before marriage, moving in and having children with no commitment. Could we have devalued ourselves? If you go on Tinder you’ll encounter grown men who clearly don’t value women. No way was it at this level 50 years ago it’s been a steady decline since the pill became wildly available perhaps?

Only bit i disagree with "No way was it at this level 50 years ago it’s been a steady decline since the pill became wildly available perhaps?"

society has always had wrong ones, hence eg serial killers back in the day etc and loose morals, eg romans, greeks etc

Lately I think of the good kid at school. The one that will be fine because they get the good grades, fly under the radar and therefore adults are busy worrying about the trouble children or the ones that are loud.

I truly believe this is what is happening with our men. And I want us to feel part of the solution because I don’t agree with the PP that say it’s a man’s problem - it’s a societal issue.

A few years ago the biggest wake up call were the number of men reaching middle age and killing themselves - and now we are seeing more support for men’s mental health etc. Which is amazing to see. Now we are facing increase hate towards women and violence.

Not all men are like this. I’m lucky to have been around men that absolutely respect women, help out, can cook, help with the kids - but I agree with the PPs that have said we need to expect just as much from men as we do women. We have so much support for young girls and we have much higher standards and expectations for our girls - I have accessed this support and I have a daughter who can join so many initiatives - but when it comes to boys and men, I think we have become complacent with the fact that “they get the jobs” “they get the high pay” “they are the gender that don’t need help” and now we are seeing a group of unsupported people who actually need help and attention.

I'm not. A lot of the lads I knocked about with in uni are still single. Nearly 30 years on. So are the girls. We were a big group of misfits, but together made a happy group. Maybe that's why we didn't produce any incels.

I worry that ds won't find his own group of misfits.

Permissive parenting, never being told no or made to do anything they didn’t want to do.

Men need to step up and take ownership of men’s and boy’s behaviour. And we need to stop focussing on NAMALT. Of course they’re not. But they need to be working on No Men Being Like This, not shrugging and saying I’m
a good guy, it’s not my problem.

I agree that it has a lot to do with online rabbit holes which provide refuge for those who don't fit societies mold. However, I think we need to understand why those rabbit holes exist in the context of the liberation of women.

There are large swathes of men who are very pissed off indeed that women no longer have to rely on any shitty man to feed and house them. Women are now able to turn down substandard men because they actually have a choice. The manosphere does not like that and instead of putting the effort in to become a better human, a more attractive partner (I don't mean looks), they do what men seem to have an inbuilt propensity to do, they blame anyone but themselves.

I think what shows like Adolescence highlight is that there is still a lot of misogyny being taught to our kids by men and women, at home and in schools. Whereas being a steady provider and confident protector type might have got you a girlfriend even if you were less attractive and had the personality of a spoon, that doth butter less parsnips nowadays.

Toxic masculinity has always existed and it's always been bad for men who have to perform masculinity instead of being a human with a full emotional spectrum. It's just more acutely felt now because men aren't basically entitled like they used to be to have an emotional support animal (I mean wife!) to 'take care of'.

@ThatRealNewt

He wasn't found to be mentally ill.

None of this is new. Men of all ages have always been a problem.

He was evaluated by professionals to make sure he could stand trial and for mitigating circumstances.

He was very angry and very entitled and very misogynistic.

Dismantle the patriarchy.

I've just spent an evening with 5 men over 60 and it's them that are the problem. It's misogyny at its worst and I'm heartily sick of it.

The internet happened.

Being able to cut yourself off from your family and community along with algorithms that confirm your bias and push you further, happened.

What explains misogyny before the internet?

There was misogyny waayy before the internet. However society demanded certain standards and incels such as we now see were geographically isolated and subject to RL influence.

The internet has reversed that. Real society is now avoidable. Misogyny is reinforced and concentrated by algorithms.

It's because of entitlement and a feeling of superiority over women that hasn't subsided or changed at all as women have become more independent from men.

In days gone by, all a man had to do to obtain a woman and have full control over her domestic, sexual, and emotional labour, was to have resources that the woman required.
Men used to have full control over economic resources and hoarded them which kept the power balance in their favour - they didn't have to develop any emotional skills or empathy or anything else that is beneficial to a romantic relationship because they could obtain (and keep) a woman simply by having resources that she was denied from accessing herself.

Over time this has obviously changed, and women now have access to these resources ourselves. We can live independently without men now. This has caused a huge social shift that men haven't yet caught up with, because now to obtain a romantic partner men can no longer only offer resources, they have to actually be a half decent and equal partner with empathy and emotional intelligence. This is a problem, because men have never been taught these things and many are not capable of it.
Too many men (from a young age) still believe that they are superior to women, that we are not equal to them, and they are entitled to our labour. Media and society in general also hasn't yet caught up and reinforces this entitlement by objectifying women relentlessly - this seems to worsen whenever women gain more rights, and there is always a push back against it.

Essentially, we're still teaching boys to objectify women and that they are entitled to access to women and that they aren't required to develop empathy to do that.
But when they grow up they discover that they do not have the skills to obtain a partner or keep one. When they experience rejection from a woman, it feels to them like she is defying the natural order of things and is personally attacking and victimising him - because of male entitlement.

This entitlement, envy, and resentment is a really dangerous combination and it's leading to a very bad outcome for violence against women. The only way to get past this is a massive societal and global change around how we present women in media, and in how we raise boys (i.e. start raising them in the same way that we raise girls).
Encouraging boys to pour their energy into the arts would also be helpful (which research has shown improves capacity for empathy and reduces maladaptive narcissistic tendencies whilst increasing positive ones.) Encouraging more reading would be a start and less time on screens watching "influencers".
Any positive change also requires a shift in adult men into recognising misogyny and having the ability to socially ostracise peers who are misogynistic, and to also not pass misogynistic attitudes down to their sons either, by modelling healthy and mutually respectful relationships with adult women.

It's going to be a slow process and really it requires change on a massive scale from men. There isn't a great deal women can do about this, other than be mindful of their own internalised misogyny and try not to mollycoddle the men and boys in their lives - it is not the job of women to keep men emotionally regulated and they will never learn to do it themselves if we keep pandering and doing it for them.

An epidemic of hopelessness fuelled by social media, violent content, porn, lack of role models, no hope or ambition for their future, the demonisation of simply being a male and therefore a threat who's opinion or feelings are irrelevant. We all see how quickly the pile ons occur when a male tries to elicit any form of sympathy/,help while they are experiencing something in life that they are struggling with which is funny because it perpetuates toxic masculinity. As if its surprising that leaving young minds to fester on sm and gaming platforms while demonising their existence might turn out a hopeless, angry, reprssed men. Boys need all kinds of role models who support them and can show them positive behaviours, resilience and support a vision for their future. They need men and women to do this. Honestly I think there isn't a more forgotten age group than boys aged about 8-14. It's sad and its as much a problem as all the other societal problems we have.

Social mobility in Britain is dead. There are no opportunities for young people here. Even middle class young adults can’t get on the property ladder now.

It’s no wonder that young people are angry. Not just boys, girls too.

The girls self destruct, the boys get angry.

Ensure if you are going to have a child with someone they are good role model to start with, relationships constantly break down but it is a choice to have a child in the first place

First post nails it.

It isn't any more complicated than that.